Breaking Bad: The 5-Minute Episode Guide

Catch up on television's most heart-stopping show — and the evolution of its most demented character — with synopses just vague enough to be considered spoiler-free. Also: quotes.By Matt SullivanAND COMING EVERY SUNDAY: The Breaking Bad Recap with Doug Fine >>

A Brief Word on Said Spoilers

A Brief Word on Said Spoilers

If you haven't yet done the Breaking Bad binge — and it is the couch binge of our time, like Lost without the histrionics and Twin Peaks without the schlock and coke without the regrets, with all the arc of The Wire and most of the panic of Hitchock — you should right now. If you consider yourself out of time before Season 5 begins, this here guide might help, though not in lieu of anything, because Vince Gillian's AMC series is the odd 46 hours actually well-spent watching television, and with addiction.

If you consider yourself well-versed and still a little fuzzy — it's been nine months since the face-off — this here guide is a jog, a way to skip that second binge. Except the ones with the asterisks; those episodes are absolutely worth a second dose. And there's not much we could do about the imagery because, like everything Breaking Bad, it's all or nothing, and everything is everything. But let's take it one sentence at a time.

Season 1, Episode 1 — "Pilot"

Season 1, Episode 1 — "Pilot"

Walter White, diagnosed with cancer, stares at the mustard stain on his doctor's lab coat, then proceeds to trade his night job washing cars for cooking meth in a trailer in the desert in his underwear, but only after he accidentally does not shoot himself and before he fucks his wife very much on purpose.